Double click Excel file may not work

zarknoid said:

Yep, tried the file on another computer and it worked fine.

Then we concentrate on the Office installation (and add-ons, like you found).

Have you tried the build in office repair?

Yep, tried that a few days ago. I think I might try an SFC /SCANNOW and see if there is a system file messed up.

you could try process monitor
there is nothing to install...
...just copy the exe from the zip file and paste it on your desktop.

Filter on the process named excel.exe
When an error comes up, don't click on the error - just leave it
Then look at the info in process monitor
(starting at the bottom and work your way up)

below is a link to a post with some info on using process monitor...
...but you won't de-select the buttons/icons shown in the right part of that first image:
Missing start menu icons

When I open one with double click and it works, there is no line with ACCESS DENIED. I think that's the problem. Possibly not enough rights to create the temp file?

When I gave full rights to users to this temp directory it works!

But shouldn't this path have the logged in user in it? My TEMP variable contains:
c:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp
Somehow SYSTEM is getting put in place of the USERNAME

Good detective work

I Googled "\Users\SYSTEM\AppData" (with the quotation marks) and found some things about symbolic links, getting around the UAC and the temp environmental OS variable. But you mentioned earlier that the problem file could be moved to your desktop and it would open without issue... so the OS temp variable is probably not the issue.

I don't have much time to look thru Google's returns right now - maybe if you dig thru them, something will come to mind.